


epiphany

by flightofwonder



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Andy has already died by the time this takes place, Angst, Future Fic, Gen, Hurt/Implied Comfort?, Memory Loss, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:28:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27167930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flightofwonder/pseuds/flightofwonder
Summary: “Boss, what’s wrong—”Nile levels her gun at the three strange men. Electric brilliance from above threatens to blind her, but she glares at the silhouettes through the brightness and the storm, and her voice is as hard as stone.“Who are you?”
Comments: 23
Kudos: 142
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	epiphany

“Boss, what’s wrong—”

Nile levels her gun at the three strange men. Electric brilliance from above threatens to blind her, but she glares at the silhouettes through the brightness and the storm, and her voice is as hard as stone.

“Who are you?”

* * *

“Nile, please listen,” one of them says, accent heavy underneath his placating tone, but she kicks out in desperation and fury and an undercurrent of fear – she shot one of them, aimed for the center of gravity like she was taught, but he just winced and shook it off like a punch instead of a bullet through the chest, and Nile was left stunned enough for one of them disarm her and knock her to the ground. There’s a cacophony of male voices above where she’s sprawled on the ground, and the rain is falling harder now, and something that sounds like sirens are rounding above her head.

“We need to get out of here—”

“We are not _shooting_ her—"

And neither of those languages are English, one isn’t even in the same realm of alphabets as English, why the fuck can she understand them perfectly—

She trips the tall one up with a lower-body move she lands perfectly and had never learned before in her life. But there’s gunfire now, and not from these men, from further across the roof, and Nile struggles to get to her feet while the other men reload with things that _might_ resemble guns in a Star Wars film.

Nile knows this is her chance and she takes it, bolting for the first doorway she can see, but someone is at her before she makes it, lunging her body to the side. She moves with them, flips them over her shoulder with ease, and when the fuck, what the _fuck_ —

A hand grabs her vest, and she goes spiraling face-first to the concrete hundreds of feet below.

* * *

“You gotta get a less recognizable signature move _, azizti_.” A man with dark, curly hair helps haul her to her feet, bones cracking back into place as simply as she breathes, and instead of processing this long litany of information, in order, that: she knows these men, she was in the middle of a heist with them, and oh, she didn’t die after falling off a building, all she can think is:

Well. That explains the deja-vu.

* * *

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

And Nile doesn’t have an answer. She remembers deployment, a little, but she doesn’t remember when, exactly. But she must have shipped out because she vaguely remembers hot desert sand and ice in her throat. She remembers wishing for her mama, praying for her brother, but doesn't remember why.

She sits on something that looks like a couch and stares. She doesn’t know these people who surround her at all sides. She doesn’t know this apartment in, apparently, Bogotá, doesn’t know the strange synthetic fabric she’s wearing on her body, or the jewelry clipped to her ears and nose. And she definitely doesn’t know those holographic screens that litter the coffee table.

 _Blade Runner_ , the thought drifted past when they flew past the giant neon signs on the way here. The new one, the one her brother wanted to see before she shipped out. 2049.

 _A little further out than that_ , the one with gravel in his voice said at her thought made manifest, before the one with curly hair smacked him on the shoulder like she used to hit Dizzy when they pretended to be pissed at each other.

She clutches the cup of tea that one of these strangers made to her exact liking, right down to the splash on mint her mama adds to her almost every drink, which is both comforting and horribly unnerving. The sky feels it’s in danger of falling at any minute.

“Who are you?” Nile asks again, and she’s impressed by how even it comes out.

All three of them look at each other. They had to be professional mercenaries with the gear they carried - that _she_ carried - but either they have some lousy poker faces, or the fact that they look unbalanced as all hell has something to do with her.

“We’re your family,” an accented voice says.

Nile closes her eyes. 

* * *

She spends hours and hours with the thin sheet of glass in her hand reading up on her future, her history. Figures and images cloud her head, threatening to break a levee in her mind with everything that’s on there, and it’s all she can do to turn it off before her breath gets stolen by an anxiety attack.

(Nile had never seen that thing before in her life, but her hands knew how to operate it, and it terrified her.)

She curls up in a blanket that feels thin and fragile, nothing like the yarn-spun one from home, and she thinks about breathing, and nothing else.

* * *

The next morning, one of the strangers shows her where she keeps her photos of her family once she asks, or maybe demands.

There are photos that she has no recollection taking, of the three of them in Montana, in Tunisia, in Greece, places they never could have afforded to go. She feels edited into another life, or maybe cut out of one. And she feels cheated, looking at memories that are no longer hers.

Nile disappears from the photos when her brother’s child is born. Too much of a risk, someone had said to her, but she barely remembers asking why.

As the photos move further in time, the more absurd they get, like watching her family distort with age through a funhouse mirror. That’s her mama with her winning grin, but she’s in a wheelchair, and her skin looks paper-thin with a life lived that Nile has no memory of, and the prospect of that much lost time hurts.

But that’s nothing at all to seeing her baby brother with laughter lines and grey hair. A childish part of her wants to refuse to believe that this wrinkled old man is him— but no, those are his eyes, the jut of his cheekbone that runs in their family is still there, and his laugh in the video for his 90th birthday is cracked and used, but still completely him.

Nile looks at the date. It was taken over a century ago.

With the lightweight tablet in her hands, she feels like she's holding onto the edge of a ghost.

* * *

“There was someone else.”

Nile can’t say how she knows, just like she can’t say why she gravitates to these people when her guard is down. Without realizing, she will mindlessly hand one of them a specific mug or press closer to a shoulder on the couch. It’s like her body remembers, but her mind doesn’t, and the gap leaves her wandering the apartment in a fugue-like state.

The three of them exchange looks in less time than it took for the tall white one - Nicky, with the soft voice and eyes she somehow knew were capable of holding infinite coldness - to catch a pancake that’s in midair.

“Yes,” says the white one with earth in his throat - Book, Booker? - and it’s incredible how heavy he can make one syllable sound.

“Do you want to see?” Joe - the inverse of Nicky, his eyes dark, but warm, too – asks, and Nile nods before she can talk herself out of it.

Later, she traces the edge of her profile and wonders why this is the first time she wants to cry.

“She hated that you took pictures,” says Nicky, a soft, fond smile on his face.

“But you were her match,” finishes Joe, his own eyes glazing over.

Nile doesn’t say anything else for a long time. She stares at that face, willing herself to assign meaning to this feeling - to what, she momentarily admits to herself, she feels when she looks at these men, too. Because it can't be what it feels like. Not with her family dead and gone.

 _Remind me_ , she wills the stranger with her dark eyes that threaten a smile, but this time, the dead stay dead.

* * *

“Why did you call me boss?” Nile asks, willing herself not to move closer to Joe on the couch like her body yearns to. Nile is emotional, but she is rational, and she refuses to let rationality go for the sake of an instinct with a foundation of air.

“Because you are,” Booker said simply, his fingers clutching around a lack of something in his hand before it settles on his thigh.

Nile shakes her head. “You said she was the oldest. I’m the youngest.”

“None of us are leaders,” explains Booker with the shrug. “By one measure of another.”

“So, what, I’m the shitty default?

“No, Nile,” Nicky says quickly, in that painfully sincere way that she’s suspecting is common for him. “She chose you. It was always going to be you.”

“She taught you everything you know,” Joe speaks distantly, a tilt returning to his lips when he adds, “And you taught her everything you knew, too.”

“It probably wasn’t much,” Nile says distantly.

All three of them look genuinely bewildered at her words.

“Nile,” Nicky says, “It was _everything_.”

* * *

Apparently, whatever business they have in Bogotá isn’t done with them.

This is the second time she’s stepped outdoors in however many weeks, and she’s barely a mile down the road with Nicky at her side before she dies again, a bullet ricocheting off the wall behind her as she goes down hard.

When she comes to, her eyes fill with tears before they can open.

“Guys -” and her voice feels so insurmountably small compared to the flood of memories and emotions and moments that leave her buckling.

They know by the break in her voice: she’s asking for her family.

And they go to her, as they always have, and always will.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: [flightsofwonder](https://flightsofwonder.tumblr.com/)


End file.
